Sunday, May 10, 2015

Happy 12th Birthday, Abavus

I missed EVE's 12th birthday, so here's a birthday post about my main character, the illustrious Mr. Durden.

Abavus Durden was born a few minutes after mindnight EVE time on May 10th.  That was a Friday night, May 9th in the US.

I wish I had a copy of his old portrait, but alas eve Avatars no longer works with CCP's server sunsetting, and my copy of the old portraits are buried deep on a hard drive for 3 PCs ago (I could find it, but ahem, I'm lazy).

I posted back in February about what the early days were like.  It really doesn't seem that long ago, but when comparing the events of my own life with where things were in 2003, so much has transpired.  Sucks getting old.

Here's what I wrote about the first 48 hours or so:
May 9th 2003 was a Friday.  I arrived home from work frustrated to find no UPS box.  I frothed and stomped around the house for a bit, realizing that I'd go the entire weekend without getting to log in, while corpmates in the UK were making vast fortunes.  I was a few minutes from grabbing my coat and heading to the local game store to try to locate a copy when the UPS guy showed up with my box.  Crisis averted.  Mrs. Durden was out of town that weekend, and I recall installing EVE on her PC instead of mine (don't recall the reason) and setting out to mine in my Ibis.

EVE was a different game then.  In some ways better, in some ways... much worse.  Looking back at it, I don't think I'd change much about those early days as 2003-2004 was some of my best online gaming time ever.  They're the glory days that keep me getting sucked back into EVE.

Today I am a part-time missioner and blogger.  Back then I was a Space Warlord, Entrepreneur and Tradesman, Leader of a Small Army, and all around superhero.  We were shaping a world to suit us.  Anything was possible.  Today, in many ways, Abavus is less than he was then, mostly due to time constraints.  (And that's not good or bad, but just the way it is).

Over the years, I've been asked a few times about his name.  I have a few character names that I reuse over and over, but Abavus Durden was the first I'd generated methodically from scratch (previously I used brand names of things around me when I was at the login screen, or funny spellings of things - like Phudge, or Phrogg).

Durden is of course from Fight Club, the protagonist and instigator of Project Mayhem, Tyler Durden.  (In EVE's beta, I held the names Abavus Durden as well as Tyler Durden).  In 2003, Fight Club was barely 4 years old as a film, and was still gaining a cult status (which as regrettably waned since then).  If I had to rank films that influenced my life, I think Fight Club would be in the top 5 or so.  The DVD landed at our house exactly when I needed it to, and it made me think greatly about the corporate culture I was working for at the time (and how much fun it is to spray a priest with a hose).

Abavus is latin for great-grandfather.  I was going into the game as a guild/corp lead, and the notion of being the mentor and father figure was there from the outset.  I found an english-latin dictionary online and started feeding it names.  I believe that I mispronounced my own name for approximately a decade before being corrected (I always said Uh-baaaaavus, the latin geeks say ABBA-vus).

So there:  Abavus Durden, the Mentor of Mayhem.  Damn, that would have made a better corp name than Pukin' Dogs.

Happy Birthday, fictional character, happy birthday.

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